Read: Match Your Practice to Your Season

Periodizing your yoga practice is especially important as you age—it takes us masters athletes longer to recover between hard workouts. Here’s an overview I wrote for Yoga for Aging Athletes.

If you compete in a sport, your training follows a cycle that should build in progressive stages to your peak competitions, then allow for downtime before reaching a new crest. In exercise physiology, we call this periodization: the training progression has distinct periods. As you consider how to include yoga to support you as a masters athlete, keep this training cycle in mind. The closer you are to peak competition, the more mellow your yoga practice should be. I outline this approach in detail in my book The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga, and again in The Runner’s Guide to Yoga.